About

DIFFERENCE ENGINE Jamming is a form of error detection…

Difference Engine* is an evolving serial exhibition, and a model of autonomous artist curation, by artists Gordon Cheung, Mark Cullen, Jessica Foley, Wendy Judge & Gillian Lawler. Each MANIFESTATION of Difference Engine is based upon an ongoing collaboration, a kind of ‘Jamming’, between the artists. The result yields engaging experimental exhibitions combining installation, video, painting, sculpture and writing

Jamming is a form of error-detection

The earliest machines jammed – regardless of machinic precision or technological virtuosity, the machine is as fallible as any human, it is a device. The supposition that human error can be eradicated is a denial of what it is to be human, for it is through an acknowledgment of our ‘mistakes’ that we truly find awareness; it is through jamming that we encounter insight, where we spin off into ‘imaginative time’.

The intention of this project & it’s Manifestations is to elaborate upon the dual meaning of the term jamming – in one sense it signifies stasis or rupture, and in another, opposite sense, it signifies a kind of fluid & shifting improvisation between players. At each manifestation, the artists, through their works, must rearticulate themselves or risk stasis. Difference Engine, then, is a mutable & shifting entity of moving & fluctuating parts; the artists & their works will riff off each other and the space of exhibition, evolving a language of contingency, yet maintaining a fidelity to the individual perspectives & expressions of each artist.

Difference Engine is a mutable and touring exhibition. MANIFESTATION III will take place in NYC June 2011 – more information to follow…

*Charles Babbage is attributed with having graced the world with what has become generically known as ‘the computer’. The motivation behind his early 19th century efforts, it seems, lay in his desire to bring into being ‘the first successful automatic calculating device to embody mathematical rule in mechanism’, thereby eliminating ‘human error’ in the tablature of numerical calculations. The Machine would produce a uniform numerical certainty that the human could not, thereby ensuring precision & automation within the major fields of the day dependant upon the tabling of data: Astronomy, engineering, banking & insurance, navigation, construction & finance. Babbage did not live to see his Difference Engine exact it’s existence, leaving the legacy of his designs in his wake he declared ‘Another age must be the Judge’.

Gordon Cheung   Gillian Lawler   Mark Cullen   Jessica Foley    Wendy Judge

September 2009 (revised Feb 2011)